One long piece, ten short ones: the art of repurposing

The most profitable content a small company owns is usually the content it already has: hours of podcasts, webinars, talks and interviews sleeping on a hard drive. The problem is not producing more, it is cutting down what already exists.

What content can a company repurpose into video?

Take an honest inventory: webinar replays, conference talks, podcast episodes, interviews with directors, product demos. Each of those took hours to prepare and often lived only once. Each contains moments that, isolated and recut, would make excellent posts. And the window is open: according to the LinkedIn study by Metricool, video content published on LinkedIn grew by 53% in a year, video impressions by 73% and views by 52%: demand is growing faster than the supply of content.

What makes a good video extract?

The classic misunderstanding: believing an extract is a chunk cut at random with a logo on top. A good short format stands on its own: it starts at the exact moment the idea starts, it makes sense without having seen the rest, and it wins attention in the first three seconds.

The real work is editorial before it is technical: spotting, in an hour of conversation, the two or three moments that deserve a second life. Choosing the right extract is harder than cutting it. That is exactly the exercise set out in the Vive la vie case study, from the long episode with Éric Kayser to the vertical formats.

How do you turn a horizontal video into a vertical one?

Content filmed horizontally does not become vertical by cropping the sides. Four operations are needed: recropping shot by shot to follow whoever is speaking, moving the on-screen text, adding subtitles (essential for a feed watched without sound) and applying graphics consistent with your brand so your extracts are recognisable.

How do you prepare a shoot to make repurposing easier?

The most effective repurposing is prepared upstream: frame wide enough to allow a vertical recrop, ask questions in a way that produces self-contained answers, note the strong moments as they happen. An hour of filming planned this way feeds the main video and weeks of posts. It is a design habit that costs almost nothing and pays for a long time.

How do you inventory your repurposable content?

Open a table with four columns: the content (title and link), its length, its main subject, and a score out of ten for how interesting it is to your typical client today. Go through: webinar replays, filmed conference talks, podcast episodes, interviews given to third parties, product demos, filmed internal training.

Two criteria push a piece to the top of the pile: the subject is still current, and the person speaking is still with the company. Content that is dated in substance repurposes badly, however well it is cut.

What are the production steps for an extract?

Once the source content is chosen: spotting the strong moments with their timecodes (the editorial work, the most important part), cutting the extract with a clean start and end, vertical recropping shot by shot, synchronised subtitles, graphics in the brand colours, an on-screen hook title, and exports per channel.

For a company, the appeal of this circuit is its predictability: once the mechanics are in place on the first extracts, it repeats at a regular pace without constant re-deciding. That is exactly what the social media service covers, with a first cut within three working days of receiving the footage.

What ruins a video extract?

Cutting in the middle of an idea: the extract starts well then stops before the punchline, betting that frustration will push people towards the full episode. In reality it pushes them to the next post. An extract has to be sufficient on its own; what makes people want more is its completeness, not its amputation.

Publishing without context: the extract assumes the viewer knows who is speaking and about what. A simple title bar and the speaker's name settle that.

And unproofed automatic subtitles: transcription tools get proper nouns, industry jargon and figures wrong, which are precisely the words that matter. Five minutes of proofreading per extract, every time.

Frequently asked questions about repurposing video content

What content can a company repurpose into short video?

Webinar replays, filmed conference talks, podcast episodes, interviews with directors, product demos and filmed internal training. Each of them took hours to prepare and often lived only once.

How do you choose which content to repurpose first?

What makes a good video extract?

It stands on its own: it starts at the exact moment the idea starts, it makes sense without having seen the rest, and it wins attention in the first three seconds. The real work is editorial before it is technical: choosing the right extract is harder than cutting it.

Should you cut an extract before its punchline?

No, that is the most common mistake. An extract that stops before its conclusion bets that frustration will push people towards the full episode; in reality it pushes them to the next post. What makes people want more is an extract that is complete, not one that is amputated.

How do you prepare a shoot to make repurposing easier?

Three habits: frame wide enough to allow a vertical recrop, ask questions in a way that produces self-contained answers, and note the strong moments as they happen. An hour of filming planned this way feeds the main video and weeks of posts.

Can you trust automatic subtitles?

Not without proofreading. Transcription tools get proper nouns, industry jargon and figures wrong, which are precisely the words that matter. Five minutes of proofreading per extract, every time.

Content sleeping on a hard drive?

Bring the list of what exists: in thirty minutes we identify together what deserves a second life, and in what form.

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